A little of everything and nothing, all in one blog

Tag: parents

Scottsdale is great about art displays and art installations. I’m not going to sugar coat it – most of it is a little weird. But some of it is interesting and periodically, it’s downright pretty. But overall, I love living where art is all around us.

I love when they put stuff in the canal. I just think it’s cool. This installation is called “Message in a Boat”. Acording to the sign, at night you can download an app and if you stand in a particular spot, you can control the colors of the boats…

Saran Wrap art…

Auggie was unimpressed

Because Labs can’t run or even walk long distances until their hips develop, Mac gets to catch a ride

To the person who keeps stealing packages off of our front patio: when are you going to realize that we don’t order anything fun from Amazon? Just because it’s heavy, doesn’t mean it’s not shampoo. Or diaper rash cream. Or a fan for the dog crate. So get it through your thieving little brain; we’re boring. We order boring things. Our kids are smelly and have diaper rash so we’re going to continue to order boring things. When you see a package on our patio, just keep walking. Unless you have diaper rash. Then you might want to consider snagging it.

Lashes. I’m talking about eye lashes. Mostly because no one every mistook anything else of mine to be fake!

Have you seen the commercial for the new Benefit They’re Real! Mascara? I did, and I got sucked right in. My Loreal mascara didn’t seem to be cutting it any more so I thought I would try something new despite the steep price difference ($7 to $23).

Sephora was almost sold out of it so I’m not the only one who likes Benefit’s marketing. When I opened the tube, I was a little bummed. The brush is super spiky which normally means it’s not going to work well covering my thin, blonde lashes….

But oh was I wrong.

The mascara really does cover incredibly well. It does all that it promises: lengthens, volumizes and separates. I was wildly impressed. But I was still skeptical of how it would wear. The true test? Swim lessons. While I’m not under the water, Auggie does his best to splash me as often as possible. I was shocked – this is not waterproof mascara and yet it wears very similarly!

Side note; it is totally impossible to take a closeup with an Iphone and not look cross eyed. Not to mention the bags and serious lack of concealer…did I mention that this was a full 12 hours after applying, no touch ups and after swim lessons?? No smudges. No flaking and still really big lashes!

The conclusion is that They’re Real! Is totally worth the money! Run to the nearest Benefit Counter and see for yourself – your lashes will thank me.

PW does not, however, which is why he’s not in any of these pictures. He claims that he doesn’t enjoy it, but I think the fact that he has a heart attack every time Baylor runs into the street to get candy has something to do with it. Which is why he goes fishing when we go the Livingston Parade.

I, on the other hand, LOVE the parade. I love the rodeo queens. I love the Costco “float” where they throw out rolls of toilet paper. I love the totally random groups of people that roll down the street and call themselves a float. I love the man who drives his truck through with a sign saying that he’s been in the parade for the last 65 consecutive years. I love that you can sit on the sidewalk outside of a bar and legally drink. It’s all around good fun.

This is the face of a kid that is only satisfied eating his dinner if his mother is making a fool of herself by singing to him while he eats. His favorites are The Wheels on the Bus, Old MacDonald had a Farm and Holla Back Girl (for when he’s eating bananas). He also enjoys when his mother is getting really frustrated but trying to stay calm by singing a new verse of The Wheels on the Bus about how the mommies are getting off the bus to go have margaritas.

When we saw friends Karen and Patrick in January, Patrick issued PW a put up or shut up on a visit to Chicago. Patrick has been living there for nearly the last decade and Peter is always saying we need to go. You can only make your wife cheer for the Cubs for so long before you actually have to take her to see a game. (side note: I’ve now been to two more major league baseball parks than Peter. Which kills him. )

So, we booked tickets, PMac and Karen’s guest room, and dropped the kiddos at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. The party started at the airport when we decided we had time for margaritas (plural) before our plane ride. Patrick and Karen had planned a full weekend of baseball, great meals, a little sight seeing and a lot of fun. It kind of went like this: arrive, drink, drink, eat, drink, sleep, eat, drink, drink, baseball, driiiiink, eat, drink, eaaaaaat, drink, drink, sleep, repeat. It was, in a word, fantastic.

Game #1, Cubs v Astros. Bleacher seats.

We actually believed that it was going to miss us. We were wrong.

Three hour rain delay felt much shorter with the assistance of many many beer vendors. And a batting helmet full of nachos. No really. Like an actual sized batting helmet. With nachos.

How do I know our friends are professionals? They brought their own ponchos. $0.69 v $10.

Watching the mechanics of rolling back the tarp was so cool.

I love the ingenuity of the people that own the buildings across the street from Wrigley. They remodeled the rooftops with bleachers. Genius.

The ivy. Properly trimmed to keep jerks like me from picking it.

After the game, we headed home to change and then back out to The Loop for dinner at The Girl and the Goat. Reservations in June were booking for August…thank goodness Karen is a smart thinker and booked our reservations in February! It was one of the best meals I’ve ever had. Tapas with amazing ambiance, good wine, great servers, no time to take pictures because we were too busy eating a drinking. But I did manage to snap a picture of the Chicago River from the cab – so pretty.

Saturday brought sunny skies and game #2 – or as PW called them “the really good seats”. We were in the 6th row behind home plate. I’ve rarely seen Peter as excited and happy as he was for the pregame, game and post game.

Panorama of our view

Post game bar crawl. Happy camper.

Our last stop of the night was Red Ivy – an all encompassing Chicago sports bar. We caught game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals and it was a blast. Everyone in the bar was electrified – it would have been hard not to cheer for the Blackhawks.

We went home tired, a little hung over but oddly well rested. It was the break from parenting that we very much needed whether we knew it or not. Getting to laugh with old friends, swear, sleep in, drink at will and have conversations that were only inturupted by more food, drinks or funny comments was amazing. Big hugs and thanks to Patrick and Karen for being the most amazing hosts! Can’t wait to see you in the desert in July and for the big day in 2014!!

I always worry that I’m not doing enough for the kids. Not reading enough. Not playing enough. Not being patient enough. And that I’m going to give them permanent issues because they are sharing a room. Worry worry worry. You want the best for your kids so you work to give them the moon…but sometimes the moon isn’t totally necessary.

When my sister was in kindergarten, she was sent to the nurse for a bump or bruise. She came home from school that day enamored by the fact that the nurse had “made” ice. She begged my mom to ask the nurse for the recipe. Perplexed, my mom agreed. She realized later that the nurse used ice-cube trays – we had an ice maker so Ali had never seen a tray before.

My niece Madi used to beg my step sister to please turn on the “normal” radio in the car coming home from school. Her friends didn’t have satellite radio so she wanted to listen to the free radio that her friends were listening to.

The other night while getting Baylor out of the tub, she told me how she had been in the bathroom at a friend’s house recently and how she thought they had a HUGE window in the bathroom. But when she pulled back the curtain, she found it was actually the bathtub. Better yet, the bathtub HAD A SHOWER IN IT!! The look of pure joy on her face over the idea of a bathtub and shower together was priceless. This as I’m pulling her out of the claw foot tub that took weeks to get, was installed incorrectly, had to be removed and then put back into place and cost a small fortune…if I had only known she would have been more impressed by a tub shower.

The moral that I need to remember is this: no matter what the gift is, the box is most likely going to be more fun. And that’s a good thing. They are going to enjoy the fact that Baylor used to climb into Auggie’s crib in the morning to play and that they used to wake each other up in the middle of the night. They will laugh about how they put stickers all over each other behind me as I scrambled to get a few things done in the office (hell, they do that now).

At the very least, this will all be good things to talk about at therapy some day. So I’ve got that going for me. Which is nice.